Recently, a man aged around 35 years old has been charged and arrested on related to his connections with fires that had been started in two churches around the St Louis area. The man whose name has been given as David Lopez Jackson has been charged with two accounts of arson in the second degree and while the city’s Metropolitan Police Department says his bail has been set to $75,000, none has come forward to claim it.
Sam Dotson, the Chief of the city’s Police Department said that the investigation was still incomplete and that it was possible that Jackson could also be treated as a prime suspect in five other fires that were reported earlier during the month.
He has been explicitly charged with setting the fires at both Ebenezer Lutheran Church and New Life in St. Louis. A source claims that he is also reported as being suspected of attempting to set fire to a family member’s home.
Police had responded to an emergency call for attempted arson at the house a little after 4 p.m. on Thursday. There is still speculation if the act of arson against the churches had any racially motivation behind it, as previous reports state that six out of seven church fires recently were in neighborhoods that had a large African American population. However, Jackson is also black. ] Reporters spoke with one of the priests of a targeted church. Rev. Robert Gettinger, from the St. Augustine Catholic Church from Hamilton Avenue states that news of the arrest has come as a relief.
He said that the church prayed for the arsonist, deeming that it may have been mentally unstable behavior.